


before the dawn (and then after it, too)

by greatwonfidence



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Ranger
Genre: Canon: Pokemon Ranger: Vatonage | Shadows of Almia, Gen, PTSD, Second person POV, can be either protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greatwonfidence/pseuds/greatwonfidence
Summary: Snippets of saving the world and what follows.





	before the dawn (and then after it, too)

You’ve always wanted to change the world, and the moment you meet your counterparts, you feel it. You know the three of you are going to do something wonderful. Rhythmi’s giggle pierces your heart and warmth spreads through your chest, and Keith’s competitive energy makes your own adrenaline rush to your head. The way you feel about them is dizzying. When you make your promise at the statue together, you pray that the feeling never goes away.

The graduation ceremony is an absolute disaster, what with the Tangrowth attacks, but you and Keith take care of it. When the capture is complete, the two of you are equally out of breath. You catch the glint in his eye when you chance a look over, and he grins, pride splitting his face. He laughs. You guess you have to as well, dusting yourself off and knowing that this is the least traumatizing thing you will ever go through.

Saying goodbye to your friends is hard, but your new Area Ranger friends are nice. Rhythmi promises to write. Keith says you’ll read about him in the paper. You roll your eyes, but you do hope that you get to.

 

The horror in Isaac’s face when your entourage comes upon Mr. Kincaid will be burned into your mind forever. More than horror, it’s betrayal, it’s heartbreak. He trusted this man so deeply. You did, too.

Barlow loses the fight, gray smoke streaming from the shattered screen of his Styler, but you manage to defeat Kincaid. You try not to think about the fact that Isaac is crying somewhere to your left. The four minute time limit before the ship is fully submerged in the ocean and you and every Pokemon on the ship dies makes you want to cry, too. But if being a Ranger has taught you anything, it’s that you have to put on a brave face for others. So you handle it.

The moment the ship reaches the dock, you drop to your knees and empty your stomach. You support yourself with trembling arms, heaving for who knows how long after nothing more can possibly come up. Barlow’s fingers graze against your back, briefly, but they retract quickly, like he’s decided against it at the last second. Boundaries, and all that. Nobody brings it up later. You kind of wish someone would, because you have to glaze over it when you recount the tale to the new students on your visiting day; it seems to be an unspoken rule that the gritty parts of being a Ranger aren’t to be talked about.

You’re just sort of tired of thinking about what might’ve happened if you hadn’t found Barlow, or had missed a ladder rung on the way out of the ship when the water was already up to your calves, or if any other singular thing that had gone marginally right had instead gone even slightly wrong. Every twice-measured step could end up costing a life, and it’s too easy to forget that in the field.

You think about telling Rhythmi in your letters, but she’s probably dealing with her own things right now.

 

The only thing that could possibly feel better than the promotion to Top Ranger is seeing your best friends again. Rhythmi grabs you in a crushing hug immediately, blabbering excitedly about how she’s been waiting for you to get to the Union for hours now. Keith sticks out his gloved hand for a cordial shake, but you make sure with both of your arms that he feels just as loved. Briefing comes before catching up, of course, so you keep your chatter to a minimum while Hastings and Erma fill you in on your new duties. Although, once you’re shown your quarters and relieved of duty for the day, the three of you spend so long talking about your roads traveled that Murph comes in to remind you of the six AM wake time.

(To your count - and you’ve been counting - you’ve appeared in two more newspaper articles than Keith. But you don’t tell him that, not yet.)

 

You hadn’t considered that the sinking feeling you had during Barlow’s disappearance would ever come up again, but the moment you receive the hauntingly off-kilter transmission from Keith’s Styler, you know something has gone horribly wrong.

You try desperately the whole way there to rationalize it. Luckily, inside the temple, you don’t have to wear a brave face. It’s only you and the Pokemon, and they don’t mind that “worried” doesn’t begin to cover the gut-wrenching unease making your whole body cold. There’s no one to impress, until there is and he’s holding your best friend hostage.

You make yourself look bold for him. Keith shakes his head and screams at you over the whir of the helicopter not to take the deal, that he’s not worth it. You struggle to entertain that idea for even a second, and so the transaction is made. You throw the Yellow Gem up to Heath and untie your ransom as he flies away. The second Keith is free, he shoves you away, breath ragged.

“That was stupid,” he says, blearily blinking tears away. “You should’ve left me.”

You tell him you’d never leave him like that. He scoffs, wipes his face, and resolves to move on. He says “I’m okay” a few times out loud, but you think it’s more for himself than for you.

 

Keith takes the role of Barlow in the recurring dreams of ghosts you can’t save that you wake up from in a cold sweat and don’t tell anyone about.

 

It’s only a day later that you see Heath again. The Union is attacked. Windows are shattered and debris lays scattered atop a nonfunctional escalator. Everyone rounds together quickly to form a game plan. No one is hurt, but there is a great deal of work to do. You hear the sound of the crash in your head on repeat for the next few days. It fills every empty second that you aren’t spending thinking about something else going wrong.

 

It comes as a surprise to no one that Keith is the one to save you from being enveloped by pure darkness on the tower’s summit. He swoops in on his Staraptor at the last possible second and pulls you up with both arms. _All in,_ you think, legs dangling uselessly below you in the air. When he puts you down, you learn to breathe again.

“Let’s be safe, both of us,” he says, right before flying off to do what he can for the mission. The rest of it - the heavy part of the load - is on you. But you knew this already.

And, like every other time before, you take care of it. You feel the connection to Darkrai in your heart, stronger than you’ve felt with any other Pokemon you’ve captured. Like at your graduation ceremony, all you can do afterwards is let yourself fall gently to the floor and give yourself time to catch your breath. God knows you need it.

 

Almia’s Memorial Day celebration is lively and bright, and Keith gives you a sincere thanks for everything you’ve done for him; but you’ve been up all night, and the most gracious thing you’ll ever hear is Barlow dismissing you to get some rest. You follow his instructions and head home to your parents, falling into your mother’s arms and sobbing openly for the first time in a while.

 

You don’t mind the gratitude, the praise, the celebrations of your accomplishments. You understand that what you did marks you as a hero. With Blake Hall behind bars, it would seem difficult to not feel proud; but some ghosts bear down heavier on your conscience now that it’s all said and done. The Sinis Trio are still out there, and their silence could mean worse than inactivity. You’ve reached what feels like a proper, right ending, but you can’t stop thinking about how your actions might have still been wrong, after all this time. If you did this, would that have been easier? Could you have stopped Blake Hall even sooner? Surely lives were lost due to your negligence, if only you’d known about Kincaid sooner, about the oil field, about…

You spend some time considering where to go, but one of the numbers in your Styler calls out to you in particular, so that’s the one you call. It’s late for you, but it’s a couple of hours earlier for Keith in Fiore; accordingly, he answers right away. He’s only patrolling a quiet town, so you don’t feel bad about keeping him on the line for three hours straight, talking back and forth about everything that has been imprinted in your minds and hearts since graduating from the Ranger School together.

You didn’t know about him getting trapped in a warehouse in Fiore before the promotion, or any details about when he was kidnapped by Heath. But he didn’t know how bad your ship rescue mission got, or that you’re still sleeping with the light on because you can’t stop thinking about what could’ve been inside the pit of black Darkrai tried to plunge you into. Operation Brighton hurt everyone, but it’s fair to say the two of you were affected deeper than most. Taking it down from the shelf and revisiting it is oddly comforting to the both of you, like a gentle, kind reminder that it happened and it’s over, and there’s nowhere to go but forward.

While you had made it your mission to look confident in the face of danger, Keith made it his to come across as ever-happy and cheerful. Neither of you are great at being honest about your emotions, your fears; but you’re trying, and that’s what matters most. You’re smiling by the time you both hang up; something you didn’t think you’d get from this.

You still leave the light on, but you sleep dreamlessly for the first time in a year.

**Author's Note:**

> shadows of almia is one of my favorite childhood games and I'm depressed so I started replaying it and I was thinking, hey, this is kinda fucked up huh


End file.
